It’s been a long television year for Michael Cudlitz.
As a “Standoff” co-star, he started last season with great hope, given promising early reviews for the Fox series about romantically involved FBI hostage negotiators (played by Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt). Then came Fox’s postseason baseball coverage, and “Standoff” basically vanished.
After a couple of promised but unmet return dates, the drama finally rejoins the Fox lineup with new episodes Friday, June 8. Cudlitz resumes his role as a rescue-team sharpshooter who needles his colleagues about their officially forbidden affair.
“It’s all good,” Cudlitz maintains of “Standoff” resurfacing now. “Fox is not afraid to cancel anything, so if that was in the plans, I think we would have heard. Everyone is leaning toward a ‘year-round season,’ so I don’t know if the fall matters that much anymore.”
Through the period “Standoff” wasn’t airing, Cudlitz couldn’t seek other steady television work. “They have us locked up until the second week of June,” he says, “but that’s the game.”
A veteran of several other Fox series (“24,” “Prison Break”), Cudlitz had dual jobs on one of the network’s landmarks. He played high-school student Tony Miller on “Beverly Hills, 90210” while he also was the show’s construction coordinator.
“I had an episode with Shannen Doherty where I took (her character) Brenda to the prom,” he recalls. “That was probably the highest-profile thing I’d ever done in terms of public reaction, the public being a lot of 17-year-old girls. Up until about eight years ago, I thought my tombstone would read, ‘Here lies Michael Cudlitz. Yes, he took Brenda to the prom.’ “
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Birthplace: New York’s Long Island.
Current residence: Los Angeles.
Family info: Married; he and his wife have twin sons.
Additional television credits: “Band of Brothers,” “Sleeper Cell,” “CSI: NY,” “Lost,” “Prison Break,” “24,” “The Dead Zone,” “Over There,” “Without a Trace,” “CSI: Miami,” “Las Vegas,” “Nip/Tuck,” “JAG,” “Live From Baghdad,” “The Practice,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “Six Feet Under,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “NYPD Blue.”
Movie credits: “Running Scared,” “Forces of Nature,” “The Negotiator,” “D3: The Mighty Ducks,” “A River Runs Through It,” “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.”
